Is universal suffrage really such a god idea? By Devon Eriksen.

The United States electoral map if only White males were able to vote.

 

If only White males were allowed to vote, as the founders intended, or if there were any other remotely sane filter on the disaster that is universal suffrage, such as:

– Must have a certain net worth to vote.
– Must be a net taxpayer to vote.
– Must have an IQ > 104.9 to vote.
– Must pass a basic algebra test to vote.
– Must be a military vet to vote.
– Must pass a test of hypothetical reasoning to vote.
– Must pay a significant amount of money to vote.

… then this map would not be what it is.

There would be no democrats or republicans. The parties and candidates would be entirely different.

If we were to treat the vote as an office, rather than a right, just as the ancient Greeks did, then not only would we make different choices, we would have different options.

Right now, the majority of voters are retards, either actually because they are stupid, or functionally because they are so misinformed they might as well be stupid.

You don’t give a retard a choice between a game of chess, Beethoven’s fifth symphony, or an Alastair Reynolds novel. You give a retard a choice between a juice box, a cookie, and an episode of Rick and Morty.

So when you have stupid voters, even the minority of smart voters are constrained to choose between the options that dummies will accept.

This shapes the whole political landscape far more profoundly than the mere results of the latest election.

If there were some sort of competence filter on the vote — and almost any competence filter would do — then we would be an entirely different country, a better country, a country with problems like “how do we maximize our technological advancement?”, rather than “how do we keep retarded boomers from flooding our country with barbarians?”.

Universal suffrage was a huge mistake, a mistake based on the stupid idea that voting is a right. It is not.

To vote is to influence and dictate policies that control the actions of others, policies that are ultimately enforced with state violence.

There is no right to govern others with violence.

Indeed, the very idea would be unacceptable, save for the unavoidable fact that there are many people who must be governed with violence, because they will not voluntarily govern themselves.

So we have to do it somehow.

Voting, and thereby governing others with violence, is a privilege, not a right.

And the only people truly qualified for that privilege are those who don’t need to be governed at all — those who could peacefully, fairly, and fruitfully coexist with each other under conditions of perfect anarchy.

But, even if we lack the magical ability to detect such people, every democracy can always be improved by better filtering the voting privilege. …

The quality of a democracy is the quality of its voters.

Imagine requiring voters to pass a trigonometry test, instead, if you will.

I don’t know how such a change would be politically achievable, even though nothing in the constitution forbids it. How does one persuade, force, or trick the marching morons into allowing their own disenfranchisement?

But steps in this direction will eventually be necessary. Because no universal democracy can survive in the long term.

Commenters:

A very minor quibble — it isn’t competence per se that we are lacking. It’s ‘skin in the game’ — voters should only be voting on issues where they have something to lose.

Our Republic was designed so that the only issues under Federal jurisdiction were broadly based. But now that you can vote yourself largesse to be paid for by others even as a non-net-taxpayer, the system has broken down. …

I still think Robert Heinlein had it right: service grants citizenship, whether military or of another kind. …

I dunno, bro. The notion of ‘democracy’ managed by the ‘expert’ class is the whole reason the Boomers are retarded, and the more affluent and educated are the most retarded. The manipulation is the management. …

There needs to be a different qualifier other than general intelligence, especially in the upper end. Very smart people are so smart that they become retarded again. They can’t imagine a dumb person, just like a dumb person can’t imagine a hypothetical. …

How about voting disqualifies you from public assistance for the year? …

Welfare state retrenchment..  becomes impossible once low fertility rates invert the age pyramid, since aging makes people more dependent on others. Revolutions can only be carried out by young men. …

The way things are going now, the only ones to limit the franchise and pick up the pieces will be the Muslims. The retards will happily accept that juice box and march into the next dark ages praising Allah.

The Ancient Greeks had centuries of experience with democracies in their city states. They found that democracies lasted until the voters learned to vote themselves the contents of the Treasury. Government then became chaotic and ineffectual, a bunfight for resources. A strong man then took over, to restore order. The ruling class demanded he share his power, so a democracy with limited suffrage emerged after a while. Under pressure for fairness and equity, the suffrage was extended and extended. And the cycle repeated.